December 20, 2012

The Moon As Garbage Scow

This morning, I'm catching up on my reading while waiting for what the local media describes as a "major snow event", which according to them will dump a whole 2 inches of snow on us. It truly is the end of the world.

In my catching up, I came across an article about how much trash man has left on our moon since we started aggressive explorations in the 1960's

As an aside, why do other planet's moons have cool names like Japetus, Io, Titan, Europa, etc., and our moon is just called "moon"? How boring.

Anyway, it turns out that we've left approximately 20 tons of trash on the moon in the last 50 years or so. Here's a partial list of what's there for eternity, unless we send WALL-E up there to clean it up ...

• more than 70 spacecraft, including rovers, modules and crashed orbiters• 5 American flags• 2 golf balls• 12 pairs of boots• TV cameras• film magazines• 96 bags of urine, feces, and vomit• numerous Hasselbad cameras and accessories• several improvised javelins• various hammers, tongs, rakes, and shovels• backpacks• insulating blankets• utility towels• used wet wipes• personal hygiene kits• empty packages of space food• a photograph of Apollo 16 astronaut Charles Duke's family• a feather from Baggin, the Air Force Academy's mascot falcon, used to conduct Apollo 15's famous "hammer-feather drop" experiment• a small aluminum sculpture, a tribute to the American and Soviet "fallen astronauts" who died in the space race -- left by the crew of Apollo 15• a patch from the never-launched Apollo 1 mission, which ended prematurely when flames engulfed the command module during a 1967 training exercise, killing three U.S. astronauts• a small silicon diskbearing goodwill messages from 73 world leaders, and left on the moon by the crew of Apollo 11• a silver pin, left by Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean• a medalhonoring Soviet cosmonauts Vladimir Komarov and Yuri Gagarin• a cast golden olive branch left by the crew of Apollo 11
Well, at least it's high-class garbage ... except for the poop bags and piss bombs.